andrew dodson

Today, I spent a second Saturday in a row in Lexington.  The purpose today was to take back the couch I originally bought last weekend, since it didn’t fit up the elevator or stairs at the new apartment.  While reading my receipt, I read the dreaded words “no refunds.”  I figured I had a pretty good case and they might take it back – especially since it was still in it’s wrapping & padding.  No dice.

I still need a chest for my bedroom, so I was hoping they’d have one of equal value to the couch.  There were a few options that were good, but they were either out of stock for six weeks, or had issues such as drawers not opening easily (is it bad when the salesman suggests using a bar of soap to make their product work?).  I settled on a recliner.  Since I couldn’t fit the full size couch and had to get a love seat instead, I figured I could use the extra seating for when I have company.  In one way, I’m glad to have the extra seating and a nice recliner, but in another sense, I’m bummed that I had to end up getting something I didn’t technically need – all because the store wouldn’t give me a refund.  Oh well… and so it goes…

I’ve had a productive and yet restful weekend.  Friday evening, I spent time setting up my home electronic drums (a hodgepodge of different pads & hardware).  My new Alesis Trigger came in, so I wanted to get started using it with the included BFD software.  It came with BFD Lite, but it is a really cool piece of software.  I’m planning to upgrade to the full version to get access to more higher-quality sounds.

Saturday, I sat in disappointment as the ‘Cats dropped a game to Louisville.  This team is going to set new lows for the program.  Don’t believe me?  Read this.

Saturday evening, the Josh Martin Band had a belated Christmas get-together, sans Doug (who had a family get-together of his own).  We had a good dinner and enjoyed each other’s company – without playing music – for a change.  It’s rare that we’re all together to hang out when we’re not playing music.  We did, however, have a “band meeting” to discuss some plans for 2008.  Perhaps the biggest news is that we might be adding a new member to the group, along with recording our next studio project.

Today was a great day at The Point.  Please go listen to the sermon if you get a chance.  Good stuff.  This afternoon, I spent some quality time on the media site, revamping the structure of the sermons page.  My humble attempt to mimic Desiring God’s sermon resource library.

Random Link:

• Slate has a good article on Joel Osteen.  My favorite quote from Joel – “I’m not called to explain every minute facet of Scripture or to expound on deep theological doctrines or disputes that don’t touch where people live.  My gift is to encourage, to challenge, and to inspire.”  Get out of the pulpit then!

I’ve very much looking forward to this weekend. I don’t plan on doing much until Sunday rolls around. I’ll have church stuff as usual, and I’m recording the CKCB concert at Transy Sunday night. In the mean time, here’s some random blogging:

Christmas Shopping

I need to get my Christmas shopping started. Fortunately, I think I can do most, if not all, of my shopping in Frankfort this year. In the event that I do have to go to Lexington, I’ve decided that Monday nights would probably be best. That way, I won’t have to fight much traffic. I will definitely not be going to Lexington on a Saturday to do Christmas shopping.

iPod Rip

I like to keep my iPod and iTunes music collections well organized. Fortunately, the iTunes interface already does a pretty good job of that. My issues come from having an iTunes music collection on my work computer, as well as at home. The iPod gets stuck in the middle. The newer versions of iTunes let me transfer purchases from my iPod to iTunes, so that’s good for when I download something at work and want to put it on my computer at home. I’m also a big geek, so I like to keep my play counts, smart playlists, ratings and things like that organized. I came across this software that will allow me to transfer playlists created on my iPod to my iTunes libraries. It will also sync all of my meta data (play counts, ratings, etc.) between the iPod and iTunes libraries. The software is free to try for 10 uses and $15 to purchase. I only plan on using it every couple of months, so the trial uses should last me a good while before I have to purchase the full version.

Psalms & Romans

My daily Scripture reading this week has been one chapter per day of my two favorite books of the Bible – Psalms and Romans. I started with the idea of “Through the Psalms in 150 days.” But, since most are fairly short, I wanted to add something else to it. So, Romans is the filler for now. Once I complete Romans, I’ll move on to another book.

The ESV

In relation to my daily Scripture reading, I’ve grown to love reading out of the ESV more. Frequent readers of my blog know that picking a translation is like Russian roulette in my world. For the last several months, the 2nd edition of the New Living Translation had been my first choice. But, for the past month, I’ve used the ESV exclusively and haven’t been able to put it down. I tried reading out of the NLT a few days ago, only to pick up the ESV again.

Not only is it an extremely accurate translation, but it’s so accessible. Think of any situation where a Bible could come in handy, and you’ll find a copy of the ESV. On your personal computer, Internet, hand-held devices, and more. In most cases, you’ll find a free copy of the ESV in these situations.

The Case for Christ

Related to my post on reading yesterday, I’ve been reading The Case for Christ. I’ve been pleased to read about the amount of credible evidence in support of Christianity. Apologetic books only help to strengthen our faith, and I strongly urge Christians to study apologetics. I’m only a fledgeling when it comes to defending my faith, but I’m growing. I’m about a third of the way through the book and hope to make more headway this weekend.

There’s a new book company out that is already known as “NetFlix for books.”  Paperspine specializes in renting books to people, much like NetFlix’s movie rental service.  Pick the books you want, they mail them to you, you read them, you send them back and get more books.  There are different levels of subscriptions to suit your reading needs.

I’m by no means an avid reader.  I try to read a lot, but I usually start a book, only to get halfway through and stop reading.  Later, I’ll pick up another book and do the same.  There are many books I’ve purchased that I’ve yet to read.  I’d like to have more books, but I can’t see the sense in buying them if they’re only going to sit on the shelf for years – literally.  But, I have a desire to read more.  One of my daily goals is to sit down with my Bible and a good book and read.

So, is Paperspine my answer?  For ten bucks a month, I can have two books at once.  I can read them at my leisure and send them back when I’m done with them.  No clutter on bookshelves.  I’d be out $120 per year, and hopefully I could read at least one book per month.  Since I’d be paying monthly, would that give me more motivation to read?

Eh, we’ll see.  I may start a subscription and see what happens.  I could only hope to get the level of people like Al Mohler (several books PER WEEK – on top of an extremely busy schedule), Tim Challies (posts book reviews very frequently – every few days or so) and other prolific readers of the world.  For now, we’ll shoot for one per month.  If that doesn’t happen, I can always cancel and go back to looking at all the books on my shelf that I’ve yet to read.

A few months back, I mentioned that I’ve been trying to do better with my budget.  For the most part, I’ve made more positive progress than negative.  I’m not sitting where I wanted to be at this point, but I have paid off a couple of debts that I’d set a goal to pay off by this time.

Most people that know me also know that I like my “stuff.”  Seems like I always have something on my wishlist.  Being content is definitely something I need to work on!

With that said, having a lot of “stuff” in the drum world also leads to flexibility.  How does this relate to a budget, you say?  With my hybrid drum concept over the last month or so, it led me to think that I needed more stuff to make it happen.  With my electronic drums living at church most of the time, I wanted to put together another hybrid drumset that I could have at home and take to gigs with me.  It would save me a lot of time and effort if I didn’t have to go to church every time I have a JMB gig.

Here’s a rundown of what I thought I needed to make another hybrid drumset:

• Drum module – $500-1000
• Cables – $100
• Rack – $180-300
• Drum pads – $200
• Cymbal pads – $200
• TOTAL – $1180-1800 (basically the price for another electronic kit)

Here’s what has happened instead:

• Drum module – traded a drumset for a drum machine; will also transport my Yamaha module back and forth from church.
• Cables – put to use some cables I had at home and only ended up spending about $50 on what I needed.
• Rack – Elected to use actual drum hardware instead (see next item).
• Drum pads – My roommate had some very nice Pintech pads that he wasn’t using; I’m taking them off his hands for $160.  They can be mounted with standard L-shaped tom mounts, meaning I can use regular acoustic tom mounts.
• Cymbal pads – transporting my Yamaha pads back and forth from church; putting them on regular cymbal stands.
• TOTAL – $210

So, I was able to put to use several items that I already had on hand and saved a lot of money.  Always a good thing.

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After a weekend break, I have some catching up to do….

• My apologies to Rich Brooks.  A couple of years ago, I was wondering why UK would ever hire a retired coach and expect to build a program.  Seems he’s done quite a good job over the last two seasons.  Sitting at 4-0 and looking at the rest of the schedule, I think UK is capable of a 10-2 record, but that’s awfully optimistic.  The thing is, it’s hard to tell just how good they are.  We’ve beaten two ranked teams in consecutive weeks.  At this point, the sky’s the limit.  With Notre Dame sitting at 0-4 for the first time in history, it would seem the college football world is off its axis.  Why not dream about a 10-2 season for the Cats?
• The Bengals played much better against the Seahawks than I expected.  They still couldn’t pull it out, but I had expected a loss anyway.  Granted, it would’ve redeemed their loss against the Browns last week, but I still think they have a decent shot at my prediction of 11-5.  I don’t expect them to beat the Patriots next week, but after that, the schedule softens a bit.
• The Josh Martin Band DVD is finally available!  I watched bits and pieces Saturday night, and watched it in its entirety yesterday.  I’m very pleased with how it turned out.  I still think it’s the best mix I’ve done to date, and Bert did a great job editing the video to get the best camera angles of each shot.  Bert also did a wonderful job on the artwork.  Thanks to Kari McGrath for some great photos to work with!  The DVDs are $15 and you get a copy of the audio CD as well.  I’m planning a fairly large update and/or redesign of the JMB website, so it will be available at our online store very soon.
• The hybrid drumset has performed admirably over the last two weekends.  I think it’s fairly close to being the perfect drumset for all occasions and playing situations.
• My new Motorola Q is pretty cool.  I’m really glad I didn’t spend a lot more money on a new Treo because it seems the Q can do everything the Treo can do.  I had to purchase a special program to get the phone to sync with my Mac computer, but that has made it very easy to keep track of contacts, calendar dates, etc.  I’ve yet to drop a call since switching back to Verizon, and the reception on my calls has been very clear.

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I got some stuff I want to get rid of.  Maybe someone out there wants some of my stuff that I want to get rid of:

Gretsch Catalina Mod Drumset – Blue Alien Finish – $400

Excellent condition; Comes with drums ONLY – no heads, no cymbals; does include tom mount, cymbal arm, and basic bass drum pedal

Zildjian 14″ ZHT Mastersound Hi-Hats – $100

Great for a beginner or practice set of hats; excellent condition; includes hi-hat stand

Edirol FA-101 Audio Interface – $250

Very good condition; for a list of features, visit the Musician’s Friend page description.

LaCie 160GB External FireWire Hard Drive – $75

Great for storing MP3s, photos, important documents and more.  Includes power supply, software, etc.

Portable 120GB External USB/FireWire Hard Drive – $75

Storage on the go!  No power supply needed.  Perfect for laptop users who need more space.  Can be used as either a USB or FireWire drive.

If anyone is interested in this stuff, send me an email.

Apple has just announced the release of the new iPod Touch.  Way cool.  I already have the 80GB iPod, and that’s enough for my music collection.  But, as I blogged about previously, I’ve been putting more videos on my computer.  I can’t put all of the videos on my iPod, so I’ve been considering an iPod for videos only.  Sort of iPod overkill, so I’m not sure how likely it is that I’ll do this.  But, the new iPod Touch has a bigger screen, which makes it more suitable for videos (same size screen as the iPhone).  Hmm…

Those who know me best know that I like my toys.  Perhaps a little too much.  I blogged about a new handheld recorder that I had purchased a few weeks ago that I plan on using for quick, on-the-spot recordings.  That was the M-Audio MicroTrack.  To date, I’ve yet to receive it.  Yeah – I ordered it a month ago.  To protect the not-so-innocent, I’ll spare the name of the place where I ordered this item.  This is the second time this year that I’ve had trouble ordering from this place, so I decided to cancel my order with them and will not be ordering from them anymore.

I checked another supplier, but they do not carry the MicroTrack.  In turn, I chose the Edirol R-09.  I think I made a good choice.  It has built-in stereo mics, records to SD cards, records in MP3 or WAV format, and is powered by AA batteries.  It should arrive today, and I’ll get to put it to use for the first time tonight.  (side note:  my sales rep from this supplier called me personally to confirm the order, verify method of shipping, price, and just to say hello – great customer service!)

I became more excited about my choice when I came across this website, which has an in-depth review of the recorder, complete with recording samples.

If you see me around recording everything in site, just smile and wave.  I have a feeling I’ll be using this thing a lot.

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